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Financial Reform

There’s an important legal fight happening right now over the temporary leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And U.S. PIRG Education Fund, along with nine other consumer advocacy groups, just weighed in with a friend-of-the-court brief against the President and his pick. Find out why the Consumer Bureau needs to be independent in this blog entry about why the legal dispute over the CFPB matters.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) independence from external political influence is crucial to the agency’s mission of protecting consumers, 10 groups, including U.S. PIRG Education Fund, told a U.S. appellate court today in an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The groups are supporting the appeal of CFPB Deputy Director Leandra English in her lawsuit against the President and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney over the proper leadership of the Bureau in the absence of a Senate-confirmed director.

Throughout the anger and frustration over the Equifax breach debacle, consumers, reporters and legislators have repeatedly asked me: "Ed, why don't consumers, not credit bureaus, control when their credit reports can be shared or sold?" Now comes U.S. Senator Jack Reed (RI) with a PIRG-backed bill to do just that!

This week, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, now also acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, made several concerning "administrative changes," including to move the Consumer Response Office, responsible for handling consumer complaints and managing the Bureau's public consumer complaint database, which U.S. PIRG has relied on for 11 (so far) analytic studies of the consumer financial marketplace. We issued the following joint statement, along with Americans for Financial Reform and Consumer Action.

From requesting no budget to moving the agency away from its mission, it’s clear: Mulvaney is not leading the Consumer Bureau, he’s trying to undermine it. That’s why we’re calling on our senators to only confirm a qualified consumer champion to permanently lead the Consumer Bureau. You can help by taking action now.

Our statement on the today's launch by Equifax of Lock & Alert, a service that will let consumers lock and unlock their Equifax credit reports indefinitely for free to stop new account identity theft. This service, similar to state mandated credit freezes, only blocks access to Equifax credit reports, not credit reports at the other two bureaus, Experian and TransUnion. U.S. PIRG's advice: Blocking access to your credit reports at all three national credit bureaus remains the best action consumers can take after the Equifax breach, whether they were affected by it or not.

Here is our statement on today's decision by the full D.C. Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals, upholding the constitutionality of the Consumer Bureau's single-director structure. We had filed an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief in support of that position. The decision is a big victory for consumers.

Ahead of three changes to what Equifax is offering consumers following its breach of 145 million consumer records, U.S. PIRG is urging consumers to get free credit freezes with Equifax by January 31st if they haven’t already.